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Six years on from the moment the Queen embraced Mr McGuinness following decades of bloodshed, the 92-year-old’s most personal thoughts on the warm gesture have finally been divulged, with the monarch admitting to feeling embarrassed about the historic handshake.
She said: “What was I meant to do? Of course I shook his hand. It would be awkward not to.”
Her words were printed in tell-all book Queen of the World, and detailed a conversation she had with former Prime Minister David Cameron, who described the moment as “the most transformative bit of diplomacy I have seen. It was amazing”.
Mr Cameron also told author, Robert Hardman, that the monarch “was, as ever, not sure what all the fuss was about” despite Mr Hardman describing Mr McGuinness as “the leader of an organisation that had once been hell-bent on exterminating her entire family”.
The book also revealed that the Queen’s famous South Africa speech on her 21st birthday had been pre-recorded in a Zimbabwe hotel room to take the pressure off her.
The speech featured the treasured line: “My whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family.”
Mr McGuinness died, aged 66, last year due to amyloidosis, a rare and incurable disease that affects the organs.
He left the IRA in 1974 and had served as second in command at the age of 21.
He had been involved in Bloody Sunday, which involved the massacre of 14 unarmed civilians in Derry, Northern Ireland in January 1972.
The Queen had also been targeted by the IRA during her Silver Jubilee visit to Northern Ireland in 1977, warning the monarch they would give her a “jubilee bomb blitz to remember”.
Despite the trip passing without any serious incidents, the IRA went on to assassinate her cousin Lord Louis Mountbatten two years later on a fishing holiday in Mullaghmore in the Republic of Ireland.
Prince William and Kate’s third child, Louis, is thought to have been named after the Lord Mountbatten.
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